The wedding march was still playing as Marco Antonio Rosales and his wife walked out of the church in the northern Mexican city of Caborca, Sonora. As they approached their car a few steps away, followed by joyful family and friends, unknown men opened fire, killing Rosales.
Video shared by a local reporter shows a crowd standing and yelling around Rosales while paramedics try to bring him back to life. His wife stands watching, her white dress spattered in blood.
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It’s unclear whether the killing was related to organized crime. Caborca is host to a number of powerful crime groups.
Rosales was declared murdered at the scene, local reports said. His sister, identified only as Michelle Adriana, was hit with a bullet in her back during the incident but is out of danger and was released from the hospital on the same night.
Rosales, 32, was originally from Durango but had been living with his wife-to-be in Jalisco, according to news reports. He was an IT engineer and both traveled to Caborca for their wedding since the bride’s family lived there. Sonora state authorities said on Monday that Rosales died from a “direct attack” with a firearm and that he could have been killed “by mistake.”
“Investigations indicate that the attack against Marco Antonio was directed towards another individual who was also getting married at the same time in a different nearby city,” authorities said in a press release.
That same night, a different man was taken into a hospital after he received several gunshots at his wedding outside a church in a nearby city, according to authorities. The health and identity of the man injured at the separate attack is unknown.
State governor Alfonso Durazo downplayed the attack. “This was an attack intended for a single individual. and this means that this will not happen just to anyone,” he told journalists in a press conference on Saturday.
Caborca is the cradle of the Caborca Cartel, a powerful criminal organization allegedly connected to the infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was arrested in July.
Rafael Caro Quintero is one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords and is the alleged mastermind behind the killing of a DEA agent in Mexico in 1985.
Earlier this year, a video showed more than a dozen vehicles filled with cartel gunmen rolling through Caborca, leading to an hourslong shootout, two deaths, and at least five people kidnapped.
